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"What's that?" another laborer asked. He was a lanky veteran with a stubbly gray beard and a close-fitting leather cap to protect his bald scalp. His lips curled over toothless gums and though he kept pace with the younger men, Pavek swiftly judged him the least dangerous of this day's companions.
"Looking for someone," he admitted.
"Woman?"
Pavek nodded. A man could always blame a woman for his edginess. He offered an honest description of the druid, omitting her two companions.
"Not inspected, that's for sure. Not passed along, either, I think. I'd've remembered her. Traveling by herself or with a group?" When Pavek hesitated, the veteran drew his own conclusions. "Found someone better, eh? and left you with that boy on the hill?"
"Close enough." It was the simplest explanation and far more believable than the truth.
"I'll keep my eyes open." The veteran gave Pavek a good-natured clap on the shoulder. "You're young yet, and that boy's near full-grown. There's plenty of time left. No need to be worrying 'bout a woman who won't come home, son.",
Pavek muttered vague appreciation while trying to remember if anyone had ever called him 'son' before and -whether he liked the sound, considering its source.
Then Bukke shouted "Oelus-get your butt over here," and the conversation was over.
* * *
The acrid breeze that made Pavek's jaw ache soured everyone's disposition. As soon as he was in range, Bukke chastised him for dawdling and struck him across the shoulder with a leather-wrapped prod. A prod with expensive iron beneath its leather, judging by the bruising weight and sting, suitable for the slave-pits but illegal here at the gate where free men worked for pittance wages.
With a painful gulp, regulator Pavek resisted giving inspector Bukke a taste of his own weapon.
"Unload it, now, scum," Bukke snarled, striking Pavek a second time before pointing the prod at a hitherto unsuspecting farmer dragging a cart loaded with firewood.
"As you will, great one," Pavek replied and with will alone he wrestled the entire cartload onto the sand.
A smart, sane man would have groveled loudly. When he'd been a templar, he'd been smart enough, sane enough to grovel; now that he was an outcast wage-laborer he spread the kindling in silence. His arm was numb, the rest of him throbbed with pain and rage, but he wouldn't give a yellow-scum templar like Bukke the satisfaction of seeing any emotion on his face.
The Crown's eruption-belch ended with another ground-swell. Its towering plume of ash tapered off, transforming itself into a creeping stain across the sky. In a matter of hours it might swallow the sun and bring its acrid shadow to the inspection sand. Templars and freemen alike bent their fingers into luck-signs, hoping the sun would continue to beat down on their sweating heads.
Not so long ago, every person in this comer of the Tablelands had known what to expect when the Crown belched: three days of misery with stale air, foul winds, and a layer of soot that turned Urik a dingy, charcoal gray, then thirty days of conscript scrubbing until Hamanu's city shone yellow in the sun again.
Urik still got three days' misery and thirty days' scrubbing, but twice since the Dragon's death Smoking Crown's eruptions had heralded fierce water-storms in between.
Some blamed the storms on Tithian, the lost tyrant of Tyr. Others blamed them on forces far more ancient and evil. Either way, Urik, built to endure heat and blinding sunlight, took a beating from the gritty, wind-driven rain. And the scrubbing lasted forty days or more. So the people prayed, as they had never prayed before. But not even King Hamanu could say when or whether an eruption would breed a storm.
Uncertainty, in a city where change was forbidden, was the heaviest burden of all.
Bukke cast judgment on the kindling without giving the sticks a second glance. "Put it all back in his damned cart." He swiped Pavek's shoulder again, but his aim was off: his fingers were still twisted into the luck-sign of fire.
Pavek prayed silently to the wheel. With that cloud wandering the sky and the memory of the previous storms etched deeply into his mind, he was having second thoughts about leaving the walled city for the empty unknown. It was no surprise, then, that moments after he started thinking he could survive another sixty days-or forever-the leather-capped veteran was tugging at his sleeve.
"I'll spell you here," he offered. "Get yourself a swallow or two of water, and ease your eyes down the line. I think I spotted your woman."
"Is she-is she alone?"
The veteran shook his head sadly. "Two men. Can't see why she'd throw you over for either of them: the dwarf's as old as the hills, and the half-elf's a scrawny lad. Maybe it's best to leave things where they lie-?"
"No-" This time the hesitation was real. "I've got to speak with her."
"Your decision, son, but have a care. Everyone's gone skittish on account of that cloud, even an old man like me,"
Pavek got the hint and unknotted his pouch. He dug out three bits then, after glancing at the pile of broken stone and seeing the empty shade around it, he dug out three more. "Tell the boy-"
Tell the boy what? he asked himself, raking his hair and staring at the cloud. "Tell him he should have listened, he should have stayed close. Tell him I'm sorry, that's all."
The trio stiffened as he approached. The half-elf moved his hands nervously over the smooth wood of his staff and the dwarf lowering the cart traces, flexing the stone-solid forearms typical of his kind.
